Morale Officer
by White Aster
Summary: Ratchet wasn't always a medic.  When a battle injury kicks his old psychological welfare officer programming on again, Ratchet aims to safeguard his crew's mental health by whatever means necessary.   rating for later chapters
1. Chapter 1: Diagnosis

Ratchet onlined to a confusing slew of errors, log updates, and the disjointed, desperately-in-need-of-defrag feel of forced medical code changes. He forced his way through the morass of notifications to access his memory core, then froze.

_-shouting and laserfire all around, as Ratchet raced across the battlefield. He'd no sooner made it to the Prime's side than he was scanning the damaged arm, even before he transformed to his feet. Clean lasershot through the primary energon reservoir and clipping the secondary sensor cluster. Probably hurt like the Pit, though Optimus merely gritted his teeth and kept shooting over the top of the boulder he'd taken cover behind. The sound of the battle dimmed as Ratchet's medical programming kicked online: analysis, triage, protocol creation... Ratchet had just transformed his laser scalpel out of his forearm, focus already spiralling down to the damaged components when the roar of seeker engines much too close brought his focus back out and up. Ratchet had only astroseconds to identify Starscream, detect the visible charge building in his weapons, calculate vector, and, with ruthless practicality (NOTHING was more important than Prime), throw himself in front of the blast-_

"Optimus," Ratchet said, fighting the remaining medical overrides that kept him blind and paralyzed. He recognized First Aid's codes with grim relief. At least he wasn't captured and in some Decepticon cell..

"Relax. He's fine, thanks to you. Thank Primus you are, too." First Aid's voice was harried but relieved, a hand touching Ratchet's arm and something writhing in his codebank. "Will you STOP that," First Aid murmured. "I'm not done yet. Don't online your optics, I'm still working on the sensory arrays."

As his processes finished booting up, Ratchet could feel now the uncomfortable itch of his code being tweaked and rewritten by another. Ratchet groped for his medical log and scanned through the growing list as First Aid dutifully logged each change as he made it. The list was enormous.

"Primus," Ratchet said, scanning through and wincing at the width and depth of damage taken and repaired. Circuits fried, sectors corrupted, processing modules, analysis subroutines, Primus, his PERSONALITY MATRIX...

"It's all right. It isn't as bad as it looks," First Aid said, patting Ratchet's shoulder. "What I couldn't fix I replaced from your backups. I have to warn you, though, some of the backups were damaged, too, so sometimes I had to go back to some really ancient timestamps, especially for some of the sensor subroutines. You'll want to go back over it yourself, no doubt."

Ratchet hmmed as he finished scanning through the log. First Aid hadn't been kidding. He'd had to draw an entire sector of sensor data processing protocols from...Primus, he'd forgotten he HAD archived backups that old. "What the hell HAPPENED?"

"Starscream hit you with his nullray, as far as we can tell. You're lucky that we could get you back to the Ark before your autonomics ran out of power and you lost spark containment."

Ratchet twitched his fingers blindly in dismissal. Better him than Optimus. "Casualties?"

He could hear First Aid's exasperation, but he gave his superior officer the casualty report as he finished compiling the code fixes. Nothing terribly bad. Sunstreaker would be in and out while they repaired his left arm, and they were going to have to rebuild one of Ironhide's legs from scratch, but no deactivations. First Aid thumped him gently on the shoulder. "And YOU, SIR, are relieved of duty for the next four duty cycles-"

"The Pit I am, youngling," Ratchet grumbled.

"-unless, of course, you'd like to argue with your attending physician, in which case it will be six." He could hear First Aid's smile. They both knew that the order wasn't worth the time it took to say it and that Ratchet would be back to seeing patients as soon as one walked in the door. Still, the kid was learning. No doubt the rest of the Autobots would lament that he was picking up some of the CMO's temper, but that was fine by Ratchet. The kid was sweet, but he could use a little more backbone. "Now. Go ahead and online your optics, and we'll see if you get any errors."

Finally, Ratchet thought. He snapped his optics on.

First Aid was, predictably, the first thing he saw. The Protectobot's faceplate hid his expression, but his visor flickered fitfully with the reflections of his HUD, and his hand on Ratchet's shoulder was meant to be reassuring. Ratchet could feel First Aid's EM field from the contact, though, and frowned instinctively at the chilled, brittle feel. THAT wasn't right. First Aid felt like he was about three surprises from a full-on glitch. Ratchet queued a surface scan to check the junior medic's vitals, a reminder on his lips already that Aid had to take care of HIMSELF...

And that's when Ratchet realized something was wrong. On several fronts, really.

Cybertronian electromagnetic fields were complex things. Every system in a mech's body contributed its background hum to his field, and they contained so many clues to the mech's functioning that most mechs used them as telltale signs of a mech's mood and general functional state. That was all most Cybertronians could or desired to make of the constantly-shifting sheath of energy. Ratchet knew, however, that if a mech had the right sensory and analysis modifications, if he or she could separate the component signals one from the other like picking out individual instruments in an orchestra, then a simple EM field became an encyclopedia of information. Medics used it as a go-to readout for signs of distress and injury, able to pick out the major systems' frequencies and determine in the broadest sense when something looked off.

That was what Ratchet expected: a handful of numbers on a handful of scales gleaned from a standard med-grade field-and-audio scan.

What he GOT was something else entirely. DOZENS of metrics, drilling down into more fine-tuned physical and psychological parameters than a standard field medic had any use for. Time was-oh so very long ago-that he'd seen such detailed results all the time, that he'd kept scans running through treatment to monitor the patient's mood and responsiveness. But that was forever ago, and he'd since downgraded and upgraded so many times that his sensory processor should have sputtered to a halt at the overload of information he no longer had the programming to analyze. Instead it flitted along with ease, comparing mood indicators with physical status readings and presenting him with a report that was surprising enough to shock him out of wondering why the hell he was suddenly getting such detailed data.

First Aid, his analysis said, was running the ragged edge: systems fully functional but strained nearly to the limit. His power system was ramped way too high, his coolant system chugging to compensate for a core temperature too many degrees off normal. His hydraulics pressure was too high, probably due to chronic strain on his servos and other subtle symptoms of overwork. And the tenor of his field itself... Ratchet could only stare at his kind subordinate for a long moment. The chill fragility he'd vaguely sensed before was the psychological manifestation of those strained systems: weariness, guilt, almost-no, scratch that, DEFINITELY-pathological levels of stress and worry, all overlaid by a crushing loneliness and alienation that made his entire field clamp unnaturally tight to his body like armor.

Guilt flooded Ratchet's processor. _How in Primus' name did I miss this?_ Ratchet thought. _He's so field-depressed it's a wonder he functions! Why didn't I...wait._

The too-detailed sensor report. The ability to ANALYZE the too-detailed sensor report. And, First Aid had said, a really OLD backup used to patch the corrupted-

_Oh, frag. Did he pull from..._

Ratchet dove back into the repair logs, finding the unarchiving of one of his most ancient backups and scanning through First Aid's very competent attempt to overwrite Ratchet's corrupted sectors with it. And there it was, a neat block of old but familiar code sitting right in Ratchet's sensor subroutines, amping his EM sensors and setting down the rubrics to allow Ratchet to analyze the more detailed psych-scan data.

_He did. Well. One mystery solved._

First Aid tapped his shoulder, field flickering (too weakly, Ratchet's sensors supplied, his field was so depressed it wasn't even showing mood reliably) with amusement as he sensed Ratchet's processor activity through the medical hardlink. "Checking up on me, boss?"

Ratchet nodded. "You did a good job, with what you had."

That got a more healthy flush of pleasure, which nonetheless sank too quickly into the general haze of chronic stress. "Any errors?"

"No." It wasn't a lie. Everything was working just as it'd been coded to, after all. First Aid's patchwork repair had been seamless and perfectly functional. Ratchet had lost some of the medical sensory mods that he'd gotten since that backup, but he had those programs archived outside of his system backups and could reinstall them. He shoved the rest of his discoveries about just what code First Aid had inadvertently reawakened to the back of his processor. It could wait. Until he had had time to fully investigate what had been changed and how it would affect his duties. Until First Aid's field didn't feel so very WRONG.

"Great." First Aid disconnected the hardline, stepping back. "You should get some proper recharge and defrag, but unless you see something I don't..."

"I'll be fine," Ratchet said. He reached out as he sat up on the berth, one hand reaching out as First Aid started to turn. "Hey. You should rest, too. You're exhausted."

First Aid started, looking at Ratchet's hand on his arm as if it was a species he'd never seen before. With physical touch, his field depression was even more pronounced, pressing against Ratchet like a lead weight. Without thinking, Ratchet modulated his own field, letting concern and support resonate between them. It was a habit he'd gotten out of a long, long time ago, but that spark-deep loneliness couldn't be ignored. Honestly, he thought, how did an Autobot get like this? What was wrong with First Aid's friends? His gestaltmates?

First Aid tilted his head after a moment, confusion sloshing through his field like heavy oil before being chased by a faint but reassuring thread of pleased affection. Then he chuckled, moving out of Ratchet's reach with what looked like shyness. "You're just trying to get me to go away so you can go back to work."

Ratchet shifted off the berth to stand. He held his field steady but resisted the urge to press reassurance against First Aid's field again. Holding back was like seeing a seeping wound and not being able to stanch the energon flow, but Ratchet knew that pressing now would seem odd. "No. I'll go if you will. Hoist can take care of anyone who comes in."

First Aid's visor flickered uncertainty, and he took the smallest step forward. If Ratchet hadn't been looking for it, he might not have noticed. Seeing a healthy response to a welcoming field was a relief, though. First Aid stopped, then said, carefully, "You...you should really stay here for observation. In case the defrag runs into any problems."

"Then I'll stay here if you'll go rest." Ratchet turned to look at Hoist, who was talking with Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. "Hoist can keep watch. Seriously, 'Aid. I'm fine. You did a good job. Go rest. That's an order."

First Aid looked at him for a long moment before saying slowly, "Yes, sir. It's...it's good to have you back, Ratchet."

"It's good to be back, 'Aid."

First Aid hesitated another moment, before heading over to Hoist (probably to tell him he was on Ratchet-watching duty) and then to the medbay door. He turned at the doorway to look back at Ratchet, who flapped his fingers in a shooing gesture. First Aid pointed mock-sternly at the berth in response then left, the medbay door sliding shut behind him.

Ratchet vented a sigh, climbing back up onto the berth. For once, he wanted the recharge. He could feel his processor chugging, slow and fragmented around the large chunks of newly-compiled code. He needed a recharge, a defrag, and a long, hard thread or three of thought. Not necessarily in that order.

He laid back on the berth, staring up at the ceiling as he reinstalled some of the medical mod software that had been lost in the corruption and not present in the old backup. Once they settled in their appropriate places, he took a long hard look at the heightened sensory analysis protocols First Aid had reinstalled.

The psych-scan protocols were extraneous, really, for Ratchet's current position, either as CMO or field medic. They produced way too much information for a medic who usually needed to focus on a patient's physical well-being first and foremost. Not to mention that he'd have to deactivate them on the battlefield or while dealing with the wounded, lest he be distracted by his patients' pain and distress. These were all the reasons that he'd uninstalled them to begin with, when he'd retrained from psych officer to medic. They were at war: they needed mechs who could heal the physical, not just the mental. That was just as true now as it had been then.

And yet... And yet. If First Aid, one of the younger, more well-balanced Autobots Ratchet knew, was suffering THAT much and apparently didn't even KNOW it... Primus, what would the REST of the Autobots look like?

It was, Ratchet thought grimly, his duty to find out.

He disengaged from his code, leaving the psych sensor protocols where they were.

He was a healer, he thought, as he engaged a defrag and recharge cycle. Like hell he was going to let his patients suffer on his watch.

Ratchet woke feeling more refreshed than he had in forever. He stretched, grabbed a cube of energon from the medbay dispenser, and had just enough time to finish it and grab a datapad before the first patient of the day limped in: a grumbling Ironhide, his useless leg braced but leaking energon from a newly-torn line.

First Aid joined him on duty, chiding Ratchet for not resting even as he handed Ratchet the tools he needed. Medbay filled up after that, as it always did, the two of them kept busy with maintenance, upgrades, and the last dents and scratches from the latest battle. Ratchet spent the time he wasn't elbows-deep in mech watching everyone who drifted through the Medbay, his newly-sensitive sensors wide open.

Some mechs were fine, or at least as fine as mechs fighting an extended civil war could be. Wheeljack, Hound, Mirage, even (oddly enough, but then again not) the twins were perfectly healthy, their stress levels either low or being properly countered by their systems, their fields responsive and registering anywhere from content to happy.

Others were obviously having problems. Skyfire's field looked like a larger version of First Aid's, but even heavier on the loneliness and alienation. Bluestreak's field shifted wildly, flaring and then clamping tight in a classic symptom of dangerously repressed emotions. Cliffjumper's field was so aggressively angry that it actually contaminated anyone who stood too close to him. Ratchet watched him get into a fight with Huffer (never the hardest task, but still) simply by sitting next to him in the rec room.

Many were somewhere in between: a bit stressed, a touch depressed, a little irrational, but not critical cases.

Then, Ratchet had headed to the officers' meeting, where the pattern just deepened.

Optimus' weariness and guilt were no surprise. Ratchet hounded him constantly to delegate more, to rest more, to take time for the lengthy defrags his multi-thread-heavy processor demanded. Optimus hardly ever listened for more than a day, and it showed in the tight, compressed power of his field, shot through with stress in the particular frequencies of heavy responsibilities. A standard case of "Officer's Clench", as they'd called it back in the Psych Corps. More than enough to earn Optimus a spot on Ratchet's triage list, but not the worst in the room. That designation belonged to Prowl, whose field was so tightly wound around his frame that Ratchet had to up his sensors to get a clean read. As he might have expected, Prowl's field wasn't unhappy, though his systems were running at full tilt and his processor load was redlining even while he was sitting still. He was a finely-tuned engine of tactical genius, whose field practically BLED stress, overwork, and a mech pushing himself blithely past his limits. Prowl was put right at the top of Ratchet's priority list.

And then Red Alert arrived to give his monthly security report. Everyone, even Prowl and Prime, sat back in their seat at Red's arrival, optics taking on the long stare of mechs thinking about something else or (in Jazz's case) pulling up some kind of video game to amuse themselves. Red Alert was the best security director the Ark could ask for, but his reports were long, overly-detailed, and downright boring. This time, Ratchet didn't even notice.

Red Alert's field was a solar flare of worry, alarm, frustration, and furiously churning processors. It only got worse as his presentation went on and it became more evident that no one, not even Optimus, was truly taking his spark-felt warnings (about securing some minor, human-dependent supply lines, this time) seriously. As he finished, and Optimus replied with his thanks and a stock line about taking Red Alert's concerns under advisement, Ratchet could SEE the spike of Red's frustration, followed by a renewed, higher note of almost-panicked processor activity as he set his expression and filed out, back straight and stride purposeful. Determined.

The Ark's crew was riddled with stress, anxiety, and a double handful of other psychological disorders. But Red Alert was self-destructing. Slowly. One self-induced crisis at a time.

iI have to do something,/i Ratchet thought, as he watched Prowl stride off with a datapad already in hand, Red Alert hurry back toward Security, Optimus caught in another meeting with Mirage and Jazz just outside the conference room. _We can't maintain like this. No wonder we've been losing to the Decepticons. I'd take half the Ark off-duty for psychological evaluation and treatment, if I could. It's got to be affecting their performance._

"You ok?" Ironhide asked, limping up behind him. "You were kinda quiet in there."

"Just...thinking," Ratchet replied. "Had my sensors rattled in that last battle, and I'm still sorting everything out."

"Yeah, I saw." Ironhide gestured down at his braced leg. It had been hit by a missile and was more patch and weld than strut at the moment. It didn't do much but keep him upright and mostly mobile, but everyone agreed that that was better than a cranky, berth-ridden Ironhide. "Couldn't get to you two fast enough."

"I'm just glad that I COULD," Ratchet said, optics turning to where their Prime was still in deep discussion with the spec ops mechs. "Better me hit than Optimus."

"Hey, you're pretty irreplacable yourself, you know." Ironhide elbowed Ratchet in the side. Ironhide's EM field was like his frame: old and scarred but warm and solid. "Aid and Hoist are great and all, but you're our only real medic. Don't go making a habit of gettin' hurt, you hear?"

"Yes, sir," Ratchet replied, with a smile.

Ironhide hmmphed, but grinned back as he turned away. "See you don't."

Ratchet stopped himself from reaching out. Just because Ironhide felt like the healthiest person around was no reason to cling to him like a space barnacle. "Ironhide?"

The red mech turned. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Ironhide shot a smile over his shoulder. "Anytime, Ratch'."

Processor ticking, Ratchet headed back to Medbay.

The Ark had never had a psych officer. That class had trickled to nothing long before the Ark's launch, not long after Ratchet had moved on to medic training. As the war had ramped up, keeping mechs alive had been a higher priority than the finer psychological specialties. Not that Ratchet hadn't done his best to deal with psychological issues when they'd come up. It was just that without the psych officer sensory mods, he couldn't get as finely detailed scans and could only catch issues once they...well...became issues. And he was so busy keeping everyone functioning that he could see, now, how little time he actually spent on each patient, how little chance he gave them to say anything, how little chance he gave himself to realize that there was anything wrong. How he'd subtly reinforced the idea that unless there was something physically wrong, or you were a danger to yourself or your crewmates, that you were at the end of the triage line.

He'd done everyone a grave disservice, and the worst part was that no one had seemed to notice.

Primus, he hated this war.

_No crying over spilled energon now_, Ratchet thought, lifting his head. _This is your frag-up, medic. Time to deal with it._

_You have patients to treat._

When Ratchet had left the Psych Corps and retrained as a physician, he'd debated whether or not to uninstall all the extra sensory hardware. That was what most people did, after all: switch out the sensory arrays for more standard medical ones, wipe the old subroutines, and replace the coding. Start with a complete clean slate. In the end, he'd reformatted rather than refitted as much as he could. Firstly because he hadn't had enough credits to refit himself completely, and secondly because there were a lot of psych-specific mods that he thought would be useful to a physician. The sensory arrays were similar, and all it took was a new set of analysis subroutines and a recalibration to get him to medical standard. The rest of the training and databases were like any other knowledge: easy to compress and archive, just in case they were needed.

Like now.

Over the next day, Ratchet unarchived everything. It took some doing: he had a lot more things in working memory now than he'd had all those vorns ago, and it took some creative archiving and defragging to settle his psych officer skillset and experience into the enormous medical database he'd amassed.

He spent most of the next off-duty cycle feeling like he was back in med school, reviewing SOP and setting his revived analysis routines on the problem of the Ark's crew.

The majority of his internal debate, was who to approach first. Should he start with the most serious conditions? The highest-ranked Autobots? The easiest treatments? In the end, he'd decided that he was probably rusty enough at this that he should ease himself back in. Not to mention that the crew wasn't used to this type of treatment. They were used to Ratchet the field medic, who moved them in and out of medbay as quickly and efficiently as possible. Ratchet, who had an appalling habit of not asking after his patients' mental well-being. They'd not had anyone ask them about their mental health in hundreds of vorns, so Ratchet pulling out the psych officer routine was going to take some getting used to.

Aside from all that, there was the sheer setup involved. Back on the Corona, Ratchet had had an office with specific space for consultation and therapy. Here on the Ark, he had the medbay and his office. The medbay was right out for any sort of consultation. It wasn't private enough, and no one who'd ever been treated there would consider it a restful and inviting place. His office was a barely-acceptable stopgap. He rearranged the furniture to fit in a few extra chairs off to the side, so he could talk with someone without the desk in between them. It would do, he supposed, until he could find a dedicated space. Until then he'd have to hope that no one needed anything too hands-on...or that they were willing to do it in their quarters.

The next day was a quiet one in the medbay. Ratchet had set himself and First Aid to taking inventory in the morning and training in the afternoon, with First Aid observing while Ratchet wired Ironhide's replacement leg. They'd only been interrupted once, by a shame-faced Tracks with an overextended tension cable from a too-fast, too-flashy transformation. Ratchet watched, surreptitiously, as First Aid, who had been chatting amiably with Ratchet about different wiring configurations, got quieter and quieter as he fixed Tracks. Ratchet could feel Tracks' annoyance across the medbay, and when he looked up he wasn't surprised to see First Aid's field clamped tight to his plating in self-defense.

When Tracks had grumbled his thanks and left, First Aid returned to his perch to observe Ratchet working. "Don't let him get to you," Ratchet said. "He's just annoyed that he messed up and had to admit it."

"Hmm? Oh, Tracks? Of course." First Aid vented a sigh. "I just..."

"Just?" Ratchet asked, when his apprentice didn't seem likely to finish.

First Aid's head tilted up from watching Ratchet's hands, then ducked again. "It's nothing, sir. Personal."

Ratchet looked up, pulling his tools back into his forearms and setting the wires he'd been splicing aside. "Being a healer isn't just about the physical. If there's something bothering you, even if it's personal, I'm always here to listen."

First Aid just stared at him for a long moment, something like shock washing through his field. "Th...thank you. But. I...wouldn't want to waste your time. You've got much more important things to do than listen to my small problems."

"AID," Ratchet said, reaching out and laying a hand on First Aid's shoulder. "YOU are important. If it's enough to bother you, then it's not a waste of my time."

Ratchet didn't even notice that he'd modulated his field for concern and reassurance until First Aid made a small, gasped sound of surprise, tinged with longing and need. First Aid's hand reached out, laying against Ratchet's own against his shoulder, but then slid away as he stepped back, ev

en as his field reached for Ratchet's like a lost sparkling. The desire itself wasn't particularly sexual. More a reaction to the emotion than to the touch, Ratchet guessed. Primus, the Protectobot was a conflicted mess of confusion and worry, wanting comfort but not convinced he could have it.

Ratchet's processor was already ticking through possible causes (and was vaguely horrified that abuse was high up on the list) and wondering yet again how he could have missed this, when First Aid replied, "Ratchet? I... Sorry if I'm wrong, but are you...flirting? With me?"

Ratchet checked a sigh. First Aid wasn't the first or last mech to mistake a psych officer's professional concern for personal interest. "No." _Not that you don't look like you could use an honest interface or three with a good friend, kiddo._ He tried a different tack. "I'm just working off those different sensor protocols you installed. You pulled from a REALLY old backup. One from before I'd even thought of becoming a medic. I had different training, different post, different sensor protocols. No, don't worry, everything's FINE, you did a great job. But I never uninstalled the old sensor mods, just got different analysis protocols. When you did the patch job, it gave me the original analysis protocols back."

First Aid relaxed a bit, head tilted in curiousity. "...all right. I remember they looked a bit odd...kind of bulky, but code's not my specialty, and I knew they were old, and I was...I was in a hurry."

"Understandable. I'm GLAD you were in a hurry, believe me."

A wash of relief and second-hand trepidation went through First Aid's field. "So...is there a problem with them? Are you getting some kind of errors?"

"No, they're fine. The analysis protocols just give me a lot more information on spark resonance and EM field analysis than usual. Widens the analysis range, doesn't filter out as many fluctuations. It gives me a better mental health picture, which is why I was offering to hear you out. You seem a bit...stressed."

First Aid shrugged. "No more than usual, really." He frowned, obviously still thinking. "Spark and field analysis is complicated, though. It would be...distracting, I'd think, to have that on all the time. What kind of post did you have that required it?"

"Psychological Welfare Officer."

Whatever response Ratchet had expected, it wasn't the wide-opticed SHOCK that he got. "You...you were a MORALE officer?"

Ratchet was taken aback a bit. He'd never liked that term, because it never seemed particularly professional, but it was accurate enough. "...yes?"

Watching the shock be chased by horror and shame was like watching a wreck Ratchet didn't know how to stop. "And you...and I...oh Primus, Ratchet, I'm so SORRY-"

Ratchet blinked. "...what?"

First Aid's agitation was palpable, churning through his field. He looked torn, hands reaching for Ratchet and then snatching back. "I didn't KNOW, I never would have... Primus, Ratchet, I'm so sorry. Look, I'll fix it-"

Ratchet just stared at his rapidly panicking apprentice, not sure what happened but fairly certain that they weren't even talking about the same thing, somehow.

"-I can cobble together something from my own sensor protocols, and we can work from there. It'll be fine, honest. Primus, I hope that I haven't brought up too many bad memories-

iBad memories?/i Ratchet ran a diagnostic on his audio receivers.

"-I'll feel TERRIBLE and..." First Aid stopped, ventilating deep to steady himself and looking Ratchet in the optics. "Sir, I know that I'm not trained in this type of thing, but I do hope that if you need someone to talk to about this, or are having any psychological distress, I am always available."

Ratchet moved the diagnostic on to his visual and reasoning centers, as some kind of sudden glitch was all he could think of to explain this. Perhaps it wasn't him, perhaps First Aid had finally snapped under the stress...

The Protectobot was still staring at him, shock and horror sliding through his field as he laid a shaking, hesitant hand on Ratchet's shoulder. "Oh Primus. You...you HAVE had abuse counseling, haven't you, sir?"

"...WHAT?"

"-and then he...it is not FUNNY!" This last was addressed to Ironhide, who was currently curled up on the floor of his quarters, shaking with laughter. "He was serious! I couldn't get anything sensible out of him after that. He just kept going on in the same line. I had to threaten him with a sedative to get him to leave me alone and go rest!"

"-ahahahaha, abuse counseling...YOU. Oh Primus bless...ow, hey," Ironhide protested, as Ratchet kicked at his side lazily. "Now, now, Ratchet, maybe you do need some counseling, I mean irrational violence can be a sign of unresolved trauma-OW! Slaggit, medic!"

"I'll show you trauma," Ratchet muttered, kicking out once more for good measure before going back to sipping his energon. It was a measure of his and Ironhide's long friendship when all he'd had to do was show up at Ironhide's door, twitching, and the frontliner had hustled him in and sat him down with a cube of high grade without saying a word. Surprisingly good high grade, too. Probably Wheeljack's. The twins' still was always tuned for potency rather than taste, and this was strong but had a nice, understated tang of some metal Ratchet couldn't readily identify. He knocked back the rest of the cube as he continued. "I've no idea what his glitch is. The entire conversation derailed like Astrotrain on a high-grade binge."

"Wait, wait, you really don't know?" Ironhide leaned back against the couch, reaching up to retrieve his own cube from the table by the couch. "Aid's young enough to react exactly that way. Pit, I thought you were just telling him to get a rise out of him."

"...what?" Ratchet was getting really tired of saying that.

Ironhide tilted his head back, looking up at Ratchet with a frown. "You really don't know? Pit, how'd you not hear about THAT, 'specially if you were in the Corps? Those scandals were all over the place...when was it...20th, 29876-29950 or so."

Ratchet checked the dates. "Primus. I was in the Academy. I was doing my RESIDENCY. I was lucky if I remembered what DAY it was, let alone what was going on outside. What were these scandals? Wait..." Something tickled Ratchet's memory banks, and he followed the association, unarchiving and then unarchiving again. "Wasn't there something about a PO who was blackmailing his crew?"

Ironhide nodded. "There was that. Then there was an investigation or something. Turned up some that were just using the position as a way to get an easy interface. One or two of them were real rapist scumbags. And a half-vorn after that there was a huge scandal about a squadron where they were short psych officers and the command staff were pressuring recruits into what they CALLED psych officer positions but which were pretty much glorified whores."

Ratchet stared at him. "WHAT? They...WHAT?"

Ironhide held up his hands, half-full high-grade cube tilting. "Just sayin' it like I heard it. It was a big scandal for awhile, and though there were a bunch of damn fine psych officers, you know how it goes: folks remember the bad rather than the good."

Ratchet sat back, remembering. "By the time I got out of the Academy, the Corps were already on the decline. I blamed the wars...didn't think much of it. Well, Pit."

"Pretty much. All the youngsters who never actually served with a psych officer have only the old news and rumors go by. And really, 'cept for old soldiers like you and me, pretty much ALL of 'em here are youngsters."

Ratchet mulled that over. "So," he said slowly, "you think that First Aid thought that I'd been forced into prostitution. And he was afraid he'd reminded me of it and scarred me for life."

Ironhide's lips twitched. He buried them in his cube. "That...about fits his reaction, yeah."

Ratchet thought about that for a long moment...then snickered. Which set off Ironhide again. In the end, they both ended up sitting on the floor, their backs to the couch, ventilations wheezing. "Okay, okay," Ironhide said, recovering first, "in his defense...it was a long time ago...maybe he thought you'd...changed. From someone who could be forced to do...anything, really...into the fine specimen of stubborn medic you are today."

Ratchet considered hitting him again but decided he was too tired. Besides, Ironhide's field felt good: a warm tingle of amusement all along his right side. "Charmer," Ratchet said wryly, heaving himself to his feet.

"Naw." Ironhide grinned as he stood up. "I try to charm you, you'll know it." THAT was accompanied by a rush of something ELSE through his field, something surprisingly hotter and stronger but gone before Ratchet could get a good read on it.

_Well, Pit_, Ratchet thought. _Why not?_

"Oh really?" He chuckled, heading for the door. He turned as he palmed it open, tossing over his shoulder. "I'll be watching for it, then."

The door closed on Ironhide's low chuckle.


	2. Chapter 2: Consult

_*raises the story from the dead* IT'S ALIVE! XD_

_Many thanks to everyone who's commented and poked at me about this story over the TWO YEARS ohgod since the last update! ^_^;; It's taken me awhile to get my writing mojo back, but seems to be working! I'm turning my thoughts back to my ongoing stories, and Ratchet and Jazz were the first in line. :)_

* * *

><p>Ratchet was so involved in being uselessly incensed over scandals that were millions of years old that he nearly ran into the Autobot waiting outside his quarters.<p>

"So!" Jazz chirped, leaning patiently against Ratchet's door. "I heard a rumor!"

"Oh for-" Ratchet vented a sigh. Now he really needed more high grade. "I am going to have Aid scrubbing instruments for the rest of his life, I swear to Primus."

"Now, now, don't be hasty," Jazz said, hands up in a gesture that was, evidently, supposed to pacify annoyed medics. "From what I can tell, wasn't First Aid's fault. Poor kid IS gestalt bonded, and well... Last I heard he was spitting mad at Blades and Groove."

Those two were some of the loudest loudmouths on the Ark. It wasn't suprising at all that they would feel the need to share any juicy tidbit of information they'd gleaned from their gestaltmate. Ratchet sighed. He was really, really not up to this right now. It had been a long day. "Jazz, if I tell you that everything is fine and First Aid misunderstood, can this wait until tomorrow?"

"I don't know," Jazz said evenly, helm cocked. "Can it?"

Ratchet made a face. The Ark never slept, though HE desperately wanted to. Jazz was on the night shift, and Jazz was the biggest crafter, purveyor, and listener-to of gossip this side of Swindle. If he explained to Jazz, maybe Jazz would spread it around and by the morning, there'd be fewer mechs who thought their CMO was some kind of victim. Or whore. Or rapist. Or whatever iterations of the three were currently winding their way through the base's rumor mill. Primus...

Jazz laid a hand on Ratchet's shoulder. His field was a perfect shell of friendly/professional concern, not a wave out of place. It felt...odd, and it took Ratch a klik to realize that it was because Jazz was consciously modulating his field...in this case, to project a calm and calming EM profile. That wasn't something the average mech could do (or even detect), but Ratchet wasn't terribly surprised that Jazz had learned the knack. It was no doubt incredibly useful in spec ops work, especially for someone who had done as much undercover work as Jazz had.

Ratchet wondered if Jazz was doing it on purpose or if he'd just been using his field to lie for so long that he did it without thinking about it.

"Ratch? Seriously, you ok? I know that it's just a rumor, but I wanted to make sure you were all right." Jazz's visor brightened with wry mirth. "Part of my job, ya know?"

Ratchet huffed a soft laugh, thunking his helm against the door frame. "No, actually that should be my job." He reached over and punched in his code. "Come on. Though I hope you brought some high grade. I don't have enough for both of us."

Jazz dutifully pulled two cubes from his subspace, dangling them from his wiggling fingertips. "Never let it be said I'm an inconsiderate guest!"

"Never." Ratchet took one of the cubes as Jazz headed inside. The aroma was harsh, potent. Twinbrew. Ratchet downed the whole thing in one take. It burned pleasantly all the way to his tanks, knocked around a bit, and rekindled the banked fire in his lines.

"So. Want to tell me what the REAL story is?" Jazz asked, making himself comfortable on the couch. "I mean, I'm assuming that something's gotten scrambled somewhere."

Ratchet rubbed his temples. "You here as third in command or just being nosy?"

Jazz spread his hands, cube tipping but not quite spilling. "I can't be both?"

Ratchet just gave him a Look.

"I'm curious what you actually said, which I doubt is anything like what I heard." Jazz shrugged. "And if I get the story NOW, I can tell Prowl and Optimus that it's taken care of."

Ratchet fell back into the chair, frowning at the empty cube. "All right, tell me what you heard."

It wasn't as bad as Ratchet had feared, though entirely too full of misinformation and innuendo for Ratchet's liking. The term "morale officer" was used instead of the proper title, with all kinds of glyph modifiers attached for sexuality and coercion/nonconsent. The consensus seemed to be that Ratchet had been one of those manipulated into the position and abused. Jazz, to his credit, didn't compound the issue. He told it like he'd heard it, but his tone was matter-of-fact and slightly amused, not shocked or derogatory. "And," the head of Spec Ops said, "I'm assumin' that just about none of that is true, by the way."

"Except the psychological welfare officer part, no," Ratchet growled. "Was trained and licensed at Iacon Academy, and believe me, no one could have made me do twenty vorn of psychology, technometrics, and field modulation theory if they'd tried, let alone a hundred vorn of practice. I wasn't forced into it, and I was not TRAUMATIZED by it, except if you count by the amazing amount of mecha who can't manage their own love lives. And Primus, NO, that does not mean I was necessarily PART of them!"

Jazz held up his hands. "Didn't say nothing! I looked it up, Ratch, and I know YOU. I know you were above-board." He grinned. "Saw all the commendations you got, every review cycle, like clockwork."

"Yes, well, Rangefinder knew the value of having a happy crew, and he knew who to thank for that." Ratchet found himself smiling fondly. It'd been forever since he'd thought about Rangefinder and the rest of the crew from the _Corona_. It was so long ago, before the war and everything that had followed. He'd been busy but happy, and all he'd needed to worry about was keeping everyone else happy, as well. It had been...a good time.

When he came up out of his memories, Jazz was just watching him with a silent smile that Ratchet had always suspected meant "you're giving away more than you think you are." Before he could harrumph the conversation to an end, though, Jazz asked: "So, what brought this whole thing on? I mean, it's not like you've been hiding this old post of yours, but obviously you haven't been talkin' about it, either. Somethin' come up that hasn't for the past couple million vorn?"

Ratchet spread his hands. "Bad luck. That hit I took from Starscream's nullray scrambled my processor pretty badly. Aid fixed me up just fine, but it involved pulling quite a lot of coding from backups, and one of them was...really old. It altered some settings that reset me back to my psych officer sensor profile, and the extra data is kind of distracting. When I mentioned it to Aid, that brought up the whole psych officer drama."

"Aaaah, gotcha. N'then Aid bein' upset probably had his gestalt askin' what was wrong and-" Jazz's hands moved in an eloquent circle. "-everything becomes clear. And no doubt everyone'll be all up in your grill, thinkin' they know what's what."

"Of course."

"But you're ok, right? I mean, you said that the old settings are distracting. You can just set them back to normal, right?"

"No. Well, yes, I can, but from an ethical standpoint, I don't think I should." The medic paused, calculating what he could say without breaching medical confidentiality. "Let's just say that today I've noticed a lot of untreated problems. Some of them severe. I can't just ignore that, and I can't treat it without the psych officer sensor suite. So, it stays...for now. ...What?"

Jazz was looking at him now, gone still in a way that made Ratchet inexplicably nervous. "What kind of problems?"

All of a sudden, Ratchet knew, he was DEFINITELY in the presence of the Autobot's TIC. "...Psychological problems. Stress-based, mostly. Also maladjustments to emotional trauma, social integration problems... Pit, I don't know why I didn't see it before, sensors or not. We're a bunch of civilians turned into soldiers, dealing with more war and death than most of us were built for. Of course it would create problems, and they USED to be dealt with by psych officers, same as medics would deal with physical wounds. Now..." He spread his hands. "The only trained PO on the Ark's been focusing on the physical so long he's not even thought to be concerned for anyone's psychological welfare."

Aaaand, something he'd said had made Jazz relax. Mostly. Odd. "It's not your fault, Ratch. We NEED you to be concentratin' on puttin' our frames back together. And Smokey and I keep an eye on morale, you know that."

It wasn't the same, though Ratchet didn't want to get into it. Psych officers dealt with individuals, making sure that their cortex and meta were stable and high-functioning and that nothing was holding the patient back from being happy. That was not what Jazz and Smokescreen did. They were interventionists. Crisis-averters. Matchmakers, sometimes, for mecha who didn't know what they were looking for but knew they were unhappy. They were psychological paramedics, not doctors. They tinkered and tweaked the Autobots as a whole but rarely focused on one person for long, and there were some mecha who were just not amenable to their tone of meddling, for various reasons.

"I know that," Ratchet said. "But your interventions don't change the facts of what I'm sensing. I have to be objective, but I KNOW all of you. Even if we're not friends, you're all my patients, and suddenly I can feel a lot of pain that I haven't been treating."

Aaaaand there the tension was again, prickling at the edge of Ratchet's sensors even without engaging a proper scan. Had he always been able to read Jazz this easily? Probably not. Just like he hadn't been able to sit in officers' meeting and sense Red Alert's impending breakdown, before. The PO suite's tweaks to his default sensor levels (and the fact that he was now hyperaware of every EM field he came across) was just making life more...interesting.

Jazz was still looking at him. "...What?" Ratchet finally asked.

"What, what?"

"What's wrong? You keep...twitching, like there's a problem. I can feel it."

Jazz smiled, slowly, and that REALLY made Ratchet nervous, though he'd never show it. "Can you, now?"

"YES." Ratchet scowled, TIC be damned. "It's late, Jazz. You going to tell me what's got your wires in a twist, or do I have to guess?"

Jazz shrugged. "Just seein' what you can see. Sensor mod tweaks are always interesting."

Ratchet looked hard at him. "Interesting to spec ops, you mean."

Jazz's answering hand gesture was eloquent and still said exactly nothing. His field evened out back to the mirror-smooth finish it'd been before.

Ratchet debated whether to say something else. He could see several different directions Jazz's notoriously convoluted processor could be threading. He wasn't averse to discussion, but he was tired and his day had been long and annoying, and really what he wanted was to fall into his berth and recharge. "Look," he said, fingers rubbing his optics. "If I tell you that I'm probably not anything you haven't dealt with before in a slightly different configuration AND point out that I've got medical oaths that keep me from using my powers for evil, can this wait until tomorrow?"

Jazz thought about that for a second and held up his hands in defeat. "Sure. Look, not tryin' to make life more difficult for you, Ratch. You know me, just tryin' to see all the angles. If you're gonna have expanded access to intel, I need to know about it."

Ratchet groaned. "Pit, is that what you younglings think? Jazz, I'm not SOUNDWAVE. Psych officers aren't TECHNOPATHS. My sensor mods are upped like your audials are augmented, or Red Alert's. Someone stands next to me, I can tell they're upset, can see how their EM field is tweaking, same as just about everyone else. I'm just trained to PAY ATTENTION and QUANTIFY it, and without doing a full scan, I'm only as good at it as anyone else who knows what they're looking for. But just because I know Cliffhanger's angry, or you're upset, or Prime's stressed, it's not MIND-READING. The closest I'd come to having intel is being able to tell when you're artificially modulating your field, which is NOT GOOD for your systems by the way, and I hope to PRIMUS that you're not doing that all the damn time."

"Uh. Ur," said Jazz.

Ratchet, sensing weakness and the possibility of getting Jazz out of his quarters in the near future, narrowed his optics and deepened his growl. "Fragging PIT, Jazz. That's why I have to replace your harmonic amplifier like clockwork every vorn, isn't it?"

"Oh my, lookit the time!" Jazz stood, stretching and humming tiredly. "Well, so long as you're ok, Ratch, everything's fine, then! I'll pass on the good word, for what good it'll do. I imagine you'll still have a lot of nosy 'bots poking at you, but I trust that you can deal with 'em."

Ratchet carefully did not smirk at the sudden change of subject and instead mimed tossing a wrench, and Jazz cocked a finger at him knowingly. "Right. A'right, well, 'night, Ratch!"

"Good night, Jazz," Ratchet said, sighing as the door closed behind Jazz and sending the lock code with MUCH satisfaction.

He stared at the wall for a few nanosecs, considering, then made a note to see if he could get Jazz in for a psych consultation. What WAS the glitch using his modulator that much for, if he wasn't undercover? Ratchet suspected that Jazz had forgotten how to deal with mechs without having complete control over what he presented.

Either that, he thought, or Jazz was a Decepticon mole. Possible, he supposed, but not likely. If Jazz was a mole, they would have all woken up dead a long, long time ago.

Ratchet sighed again and shook his head, feeling very, very old as he stood and headed to his berth.


End file.
